Are 60 MPG cars and Houston-style van pools in America’s future?

A group of House Democrats say they have several proposals to improve transportation in American communities by increasing automobile fuel efficiency standards and making incentives — such as Houston-style van-pooling — for citizens to curb driving.

The group, a task force chaired by Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., released a report called “Freedom from Oil,” which recommends boosting the fuel efficiency standard for automobiles to 60 miles per gallon by 2025. Current law requires that American-made cars have an average fuel efficiency of 39 miles per gallon in 2016.

Boosting that standard to 60 miles per gallon could save American families $513 in gasoline costs in the summer months alone, according to the report, and would achieve savings of about $67 billion and 405 million gallons in just the summer months if it were adopted.

Blumenauer said over 50 percent of Americans don’t have access to public alternatives to cars.

“Here, in Washington, D.C., when gas prices spike, people have choices…they can take a bus, a metro, or a bike,” Blumenauer told a news conference Thursday.

According to the report, families in auto-dependent neighborhoods spend 25 percent of their total budgets on transportation costs. By contrast, the report said, families in neighborhoods with more mass transit and transportation options like bicycle lanes, spend only nine percent of their budgets on transportation.

“For everybody who has the challenge of making a living, the choices they have are very limited,” said Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt. “It’s a very big deal every time you fill up your tank of gas.”

The report stresses the importance of actions by businesses to coincide with federal actions. Jason Pavluchuk, the federal liaison for the Association for Commuter Transportation, mentioned Houston as an example of a city benefiting from a public-private partnership.

”Houston is predominantly a highway-based city, but we’ve got people living as far away as 40-50 miles outside of center-city Houston,” he said. “The van-pool program run by the Houston city Metro has been a phenomenal example of how cities can give options to their constituents.

“Generally speaking, van-pools are all operated by private providers, so there’s very little public capital used. It’s a great example of public-private partnerships,” he said.